Dog Toilet Training: The Modern Method
Dog toilet training is one of the first things you must teach your puppy. Dogs are essentially clean animals. They will instinctively soil outside their sleeping and eating areas. There are several myths associated with dog toilet training that need to be dispelled immediately.
“Put plenty of newspaper down on the floor and when the dog goes on the paper praise and reward him with a treat” This is fine if you want to encourage your dog to go on newspaper inside your house for the rest of his life!
“When you discover that your puppy has gone in the wrong place, drag him back to it and rub his nose in it” This very old fashioned advice contains no ancient wisdom at all. In fact it can cause puppies deep and long term emotional stress. Dogs live for the present and they will not understand or learn from the experience because they will not be able to connect your behaviour with what they did wrong possible hours before.
Dog toilet training should be quite a simple process provided you take the trouble to get into a good routine. If you are training a puppy then you will have to build your routine around the puppy’s needs. It’s good that these are reliably predictable. Puppies need to wee immediately after waking up so it is important that you are present to take him into the garden without delay. Puppies also urinate within 15 minutes of eating and defacate within about 30 minutes of eating. So again it is important for you to be around to take youir puppy outside. Young puppies do not have good bladder control and need to wee at least every hour or two. Puppies also tend to urinate spontaneoulsy when they are excited so you should take your puppy outside frequently when he is on the move. You may find it useful to keep a daily toilet record so that you can easily predict when your puppy will want to go.
Always go into the garden with your puppy and lead him to the same spot every time. It is also a good idea to always use the same route because your puppy will more easily learn the routine. Use cue words like “wee” and “poo” as he goes. Using different words means that later on you will be able to prompt each action as a command. Fortunately dogs are creatures of habit and they soon learn the correct routine.
Older dogs need a similar routine except thast they are able to control themselves for much longer. In this respect it makes the job of dog toilet training harder because it is less predictable. Vigilence is the important thing here.
If you catch your dog about to go in the house then you should grab his attention by crying out his name in a loud voice and immediately escort him out into the garden and then praise him when he goes out there. Accidents will happen even when you believe that the training is going well. It is a complete waste of time to scold the offender after the accident has occured.
Cleaning up after an Accident
It is important to know that most cleaning agents are not suitable for cleaning up after your dog has urinated. The urine contains uric acid and this is where the smell comes from. Standard cleaning agents contain ammonia, bleach and disinfectant, none of these will remove the uric acid, in fact they may well add to it. This will attract the dog back to the same spot since uric acid actively stimulates the dog to urinate. The product that I recommend is Urine Off this contains odour eliminators which completely remove the smell as well as the urge for your puppy to go again in the same spot.
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